Help! My Schedule is Making Me Crazy!

“Busy!” my friend sighed, after I had asked how he was doing. The demands of work had been eating away at family time, his weekends were spent chauffeuring their kids from soccer games to ballet practices to friends’ houses for sleepovers. He looked exhausted!

My friend isn’t alone. Chances are that you too have felt – or now feel – overwhelmed with the busyness of life. Between work schedules, the demands of parenting, involvement at our kids’ schools, and volunteering at church, we race through the week at breakneck speed, barely pausing long enough to catch our breath. We collapse into bed at the end of the day, only to get up 6 hours later and repeat the whole cycle again the next day. For some of us, the thought of taking vacation leaves us feeling anxious and so we take our work with us. For others, our marriages suffer the strain as we argue with our spouse about who is more over-committed. We aren’t meant to be this busy.

Mad Like Martha

Luke’s gospel tells us a story of Jesus’ encounter with a woman just like us. Martha was a busy woman. Knowing that Jesus was coming for lunch, she got busy doing what she did best: kneading the dough to make bread, seasoning and braising the meat, putting fresh linens on the bed, and sweeping the home to make it more welcoming. Martha excelled in hospitality – but her sister Mary was more interested in spending time with Jesus, asking him questions, and listening to him teach. If you’ve ever stood in Martha’s sandals, you can relate to the resentment that builds as you do all the work while others enjoy the fruit of your labor--without so much as a thank-you! “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” Martha demanded of Jesus.

It would be easy to hear this simply as a cautionary tale: “Don’t be a Martha!” “Don’t be too busy to pray!” In fact, Jesus’ gentle reply exposes a sin buried deep within all of our hearts. “You are anxious about many things,” he says to her (and to us). Behind Martha’s busyness was anxiousness.

Fearful Busyness

Anxiousness is often a deep fear about the future: we become anxious because we fear our lack of control over what will happen tomorrow. We become anxious when we fear that we aren’t enough-–that our lives will be weighed and found wanting. We get anxious when we fear that we aren’t good enough, that we aren’t working hard enough, that we haven’t accomplished enough, that we are somehow incomplete. Anxious people become busy people by trying over and over to prove ourselves. We pour ourselves into our work, trying to prove that we are successful. We bend over backwards, trying to give our kids every opportunity available to prove that we are good parents. We jump at every volunteer opportunity to prove that we are good Christians or good citizens.

That’s why Jesus says to Martha, “Mary has chosen something that cannot be taken away from her.” Interestingly, Jesus is using a verb that is in the future – Mary has chosen to invest herself in something that will last eternally. What is it? She has placed herself at the feet of Jesus, which in those days was a posture of discipleship. Mary realizes that her relationship to Jesus is her identity – she is drawing her joy and vitality from him. Jesus isn’t telling us to be lazy (after all, this story fits in immediately after the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus urges us to invest ourselves in the care of the poor!). He is telling us that we must find our complete identity in him rather than anxiously trying to build our identity on completing our to-do list, or on our professional or personal accomplishments

Unburdening from the Busyness

If you sense that you are overly busy, if you are feeling burned out, or if the demands of your schedule require you to neglect priorities, it’s time to ask the Holy Spirit to help you evaluate your life. Seeking God’s wisdom, ask…

What are you anxious about? How might you be living your life out of anxiety? Are you over-scheduling your life because you are trying to prove yourself as a parent? Do you overwork because your identity is rooted in your professional success? Do you measure your worth by the amount of good that you do? Begin by identifying the alter-identity you are seeking to build.

How do you need to trust what cannot be taken? Your identity as a child of God can never be taken from you, and gives you what no amount of human busyness can earn. Nothing we do or don’t do, succeed in or fail at, nothing we accomplish, or bomb completely can make us more or less than we already are in Christ. Ask God to help you see yourself as He sees you, and to let that be the foundation of who you are.

How can you choose what is most important? Remembering your identity as a Christian helps you set healthy limits and priorities. Trusting that God values you as His child helps you resist the pressure to work too much overtime in an effort to prove yourself through your job. Remembering that God doesn’t measure you by the good you do (or don’t do) helps you say “no” to the person who asks you to volunteer when you are already over-committed.

How can you sit at the feet of Jesus? To sit at the feet of Jesus means that we are drawing our joy and our strength from our relationship with him and not primarily from what we do or accomplish. It means that striving to obey him, and seeking him in prayer and scripture are the heartbeat of our daily life.

So, “How are you?” If your knee-jerk reaction to this question is “Busy!”, perhaps it’s time to catch your breath. You may be anxious about many things, but Jesus offers us the rest of knowing and believing that in him, we may rest.

Rev. Dr. Rob Toornstra

Rob Toornstra has pastored a church in Salem Oregon for the past ten years. He has been married to Amy for fifteen years, and together, they are enjoying the adventure of raising two girls and one boy. For fun, Rob enjoys cooking, reading, aviation, and geocaching. He is the author of "Naked and Unashamed: How the Good News of Jesus Transforms Intimacy" (Doulos, 2014).